> The innocuous appearance of many of the videos raises questions about whether the surveillance was necessary. In one “auto boost/strip”-related call, the drone follows two young men in their car, at least one of whom is described in police records as having been identified as a “suspicious person in a vehicle.” Then the two men emerge onto a basketball court and start playing, and the drone departs.
Scale. The possibility of surveillance was far less worrying when three police officers had to tail you, because they'd only expend that effort when they were pretty sure you'd done a crime.
I remember reading this excellent article on Bloomberg about a guy who started a company that uses Cessna's with high-quality cameras, and they fly over an area for hours, and then use that footage to rollback crimes.
They filmed everything. There's a video if you can find it where the man shows footage they took of a city in Mexico, where a murder occurred, and how they were able to roll back time and see the murder go down in real time.
It was really fascinating… In 2016.
At the time I imagined one day we would have blimps, or long range aircraft circling all major cities 24/7 doing the same thing.
Sad to see. Here in Europe it's definitely not any better. Despite the GDPR’s safeguards, tech surveillance is set to become one of the defining civil liberties battlegrounds in across the World. Even with the EU AI act, the people of europe are significantly at risk.
Wait until you find out what the EU want/have asked the GAM trio of big tech corps to do to your phone and private messaging platforms. (Coincidentally they suddenly don't think so big an anti competition problem exists anymore).
Am I missing something? I can click the 'article' but its a big picture and a single paragraph. That reads like a picture description.
> The innocuous appearance of many of the videos raises questions about whether the surveillance was necessary. In one “auto boost/strip”-related call, the drone follows two young men in their car, at least one of whom is described in police records as having been identified as a “suspicious person in a vehicle.” Then the two men emerge onto a basketball court and start playing, and the drone departs.
https://archive.is/dychh
Useful tool mentioned in the article, hadn’t seen this before: https://github.com/lc/gau
Helicopters already exist, and so do consumer drones - so why is this an issue?
Scale. The possibility of surveillance was far less worrying when three police officers had to tail you, because they'd only expend that effort when they were pretty sure you'd done a crime.
With mass drone surveillance and online safety acts, we will finally be able to keep our children truly safe for the small cost of privacy.
To balance it, the police need to be extremely accountable, but so far they get away with murder pretty easily...so...
And the amazing thing is that DJI was the ones lambasted for their shitty security practices.
But here we are, with Skydio users openly using public sharing links to their drone feeds 24x7x365 apparently.
Sounds like another vendor needs to get added to the Covered List, methinks, but the lobbyists won't let that one fly.
The only thing insecure was the market position of the domestic competition.
Or rather, lobbyists will let it fly as long as it's got a camera.
I remember reading this excellent article on Bloomberg about a guy who started a company that uses Cessna's with high-quality cameras, and they fly over an area for hours, and then use that footage to rollback crimes.
They filmed everything. There's a video if you can find it where the man shows footage they took of a city in Mexico, where a murder occurred, and how they were able to roll back time and see the murder go down in real time.
It was really fascinating… In 2016.
At the time I imagined one day we would have blimps, or long range aircraft circling all major cities 24/7 doing the same thing.
Instead of planes, they are using drones…
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-baltimore-secret-sur...
Drones are cheap & reliable. Vs. blimps, balloons, and such have repeatedly proven themselves quite fragile.
An unmanned plane is also called a drone.
Sad to see. Here in Europe it's definitely not any better. Despite the GDPR’s safeguards, tech surveillance is set to become one of the defining civil liberties battlegrounds in across the World. Even with the EU AI act, the people of europe are significantly at risk.
Wait until you find out what the EU want/have asked the GAM trio of big tech corps to do to your phone and private messaging platforms. (Coincidentally they suddenly don't think so big an anti competition problem exists anymore).
Are you referring to Chat Control 2.0 which has repeatedly failed to pass the Parliament and is illegal to implement today?
It's nice to see SFPD taking car break-ins seriously.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"